Lime Grove Studios

Lime Grove Studios was a "lot" of studios built largely in a single building located on Lime Grove Street in the Shepherd's Bush district of the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It date to 1915, when it was built by Gaumont Films.

Relevance to Doctor Who

Lime Grove Studios were the predominant studios used to film Doctor Who during the early William Hartnell and most of the Patrick Troughton eras. They were used for principal photography, and as such would have been the primary workplace of Hartnell, Carol Ann Ford, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill. Frazer Hines, Wendy Padbury, Deborah Watling and Patrick Troughton. They were also the first workplace of John Nathan-Turner on the program, who was a floor assistant on the single episode of The Space Pirates which was shot at Lime Grove.

The studios were notably hated by Verity Lambert, both for their size and lack of facilities. One of her principal technical ambitions was to get Doctor Who shifted out of the cramped quarters of Lime Grove. She eventually succeeded in the second season, but, long after she had departed the series, the program firmly returned to Lime Grove in the latter half of the fourth season. There Doctor Who firmly remained until the first episode of The Space Pirates.

Various studios within Lime Grove

Studio D

Studio D is perhaps the most famous of the Lime Grove studios to Doctor Who enthusiasts. It was the original studio location for the programme, and thus has become famous in descriptions of the filming of the pilot, An Unearthly Child. It is also the subject of many unpleasant memories on the part of the production staff, and its many inefficiencies have been touched on in the pages of Doctor Who Magazine, and on DVD extras, for years.

Stories Filmed at Lime Grove Studio D

• The Pilot Episode
• An Unearthly Child
• The Daleks
• The Edge of Destruction
• Marco Polo
• The Keys of Marinus
• The Aztecs
• The Sensorites

Studio G

Studio G was a long, narrow, rectangular space which Verity Lambert was offered by the BBC Planning Department. In the deal, she got Planning to agree that Studio D was unsuitable as the main recording space for the programme. She even got them to rotate Doctor Who to the top of the list of shows to be scheduled at Television Centre. However, if TC was unavailable, she would have to use Lime Grove's Studio G. Lambert continued to argue against this "compromise" because the shape of Studio G was totally wrong for the depiction of science fictional vistas, and allowed for no sense of depth.. In practice Studio G was not actually used by Doctor Who.

References